Trodding through this Armageddon

by glenntillett@yahoo.com

Perhaps it is my fanciful imagination but with each passing day it seems the wheels of our economy grind just a little slower. Each week brings news of another business closing under the threat of foreclosure or bankruptcy, and certainly each weekend some newspaper editions are replete with a fresh batch of housing foreclosures.

It is heartbreaking for me at least, to read the names of the soon-to-be ex-property owners because it seems I am seeing more and more some familiar names. In some cases the properties are places people have called home for decades. Why is it, I wonder, why can’t we recognize that this is a crisis and we need collective action to alleviate the suffering?

There is little research and therefore little by way of analysis being done on this issue. At first, a couple years ago, the fallout from the bankruptcy of the Development Finance Corporation was that the real estate market was being flooded with properties, mostly land it seems to me, and second homes that had been bought as an investment during the boom years when money, namely financing was very available.

A lot of the properties back then were in the new housing projects, or so it seems, and most were being done by the DFC. These days it seems to me that most of the auctions are by the commercial banks, I’m even seeing auctions by the credit unions, and like I said some of them are for properties I know people have lived on and in for decades.

By the same token it is also fairly obvious that new home construction is way, way down. In fact it would seem that construction overall is way, way down. What will happen if these two trends continue? Imagine they’re two lines on the same graph, what happens when the sinking new construction line intersects the rising foreclosure line? Are we there yet? Would that mean we’re in a recession? Or a depression?

I don’t want to hear that the Government, the political executive can’t do anything. We elected them to lead, they cannot abdicate their responsibility even if they think that there isn’t anything they can do.

Maybe it is just me but it seems to me the number of auctions of all kinds are increasing. It’s ok, if you are so partisan that you wish to dispute this, go ahead. I can’t prove it ‘cause I haven’t been counting and I don’t have the time or the energy to go back and count, and no one else seems to want to do it either.

The signs of sufferation are all around us. I could hardly bear to watch a family being evicted from their former home this week. They had to take refuge in a smaller much more dilapidated dwelling with broken plumbing and no electricity, at least for a few days. They went from property owners to tenants in what seems in a blink. One day they were in their own yard, complete with backyard, front yard, driveway and enough rooms so they could sleep separately. In less than twenty four hours this family of six was trying to bunk together in two small bedrooms, hunkering down from the elements and hoping it wouldn’t rain because they have two windows that can’t close.

What happens when one out of every five able bodied person can’t find work? You can see the trend as you drive through the villages that line our highways. There are lot more young men hanging out on verandahs these days. It’s easy to holler that they could go plant but plant what, weed? Sure you can plant enough to feed yourself and your family but what are you going to do for clothes, transportation, school fees, light, telephone, toilet paper, medicine, and so on? Somebody is going to set up some place where you can go barter?

According to Mr. Barrow we have money in the bank called our foreign reserves, though he didn’t say why or what they’re reserved for. Are they being held in case of a crisis or some catastrophe?

Belize is in the midst of a worsening economic crisis. The four horsemen of the apocalypse are stalking the land. I am not being apocalyptic when I say that these are the end of days because I sense that we are seeing the end of an era, a time in our lives when those of us who survive will be able to look back and understand that our lives are being irrevocably changed.

We are passing through a storm Belize, and none of us know where the other side is. I write these things because I think that it is important that we know that we who are not Barrow and/or UDP are suffering alike. We need to stand together as we face this Armageddon.

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